8. Some Examples of the Muddle Caused by Municipalisation

What confusion the “municipalisation” programme has created in the
minds of Social-Democrats and to what a helpless position it has reduced our
propagandists and agitators can be seen from the following curious cases.

Y. Larin is undoubtedly a prominent and well-known figure in Menshevik
literature. In Stockholm, as can be seen from the Minutes, he took a most active
part in securing the adoption of the programme. His pamphlet, The Peasant
Question and Social-Democracy, which was included in the series of
pamphlets published by Novy Mir, is almost an official commentary on
the Menshevik programme. And here is what this commentator writes. In the
concluding pages of his pamphlet he sums up the question of agrarian reform. He
foresees three kinds of outcome of these reforms:
(1) additional allotments to the peasants as their private property,
subject to compensation—“the most unfavourable outcome for the
working class, for the lower strata of the peasantry and for the whole
development of the national economy” (p. 103). The second outcome is
the best, and. the third, although unlikely, is “a paper declaration
of compulsory equalised land tenure.” One would have thought that we had
the right to expect that an advocate of the municipalisation programme
would, have made municipalisation the second outcome. But no! Listen to
this:

“Perhaps all the confiscated land, or even all the land in
general, will be declared the property of the state as a
whole and will be turned over to the local self-governing bodies to be
distributed gratis [??] for the use of all who are actually
cultivating it, without, of course, the compulsory introduction throughout
the whole of Russia of equalised land tenure, and without prohibiting the
employment of hired labour. Such a solution of the problem, as we have
seen, best secures the immediate interests, of the proletariat as well as
the general interests of the socialist movement, and will help to increase
the productivity of labour, which is the fundamental, vital question for
Russia. Therefore, the Social-Democrats should advocate and carry out an
agrarian reform [?] precisely of that character. It will be achieved when,
at the highest point of development of the revolution, the conscious
elements of social development are strong” (p. 103. Our italics).

If Y. Larin or other Mensheviks believe this to be an exposition of the
municipalisation programme, they are labouring under a tragicomical
illusion. The transfer of all the land to state ownership is
nationalisation of the land, and we cannot conceive of the land
being disposed of other wise than through local self-governing bodies
acting within the limits of a general state law. To such a
programme—not of “reform”, of course, but of
revolution—I wholeheartedly subscribe, except for the point about
distributing the land “gratis” even to those farmers who employ
hired labour, To promise such a thing on behalf of bourgeois society is
more fitting for an anti-Semite than for a Social-Democrat. No Marxist can
assume the possibility of such an outcome with in the framework of
capitalist development; nor is there any reason for considering it
desirable to transfer rent to capitalist farmers. Nevertheless, except for
this point, which was probably a slip of the pen, it remains an indubitable
fact that in a popular Menshevik pamphlet the nationalisation of the
land is advocated as the best outcome at the highest point of
development of the revolution.

On the question of what is to be done with the privately owned lands, Larin has
this to say:

“As regards the privately owned lands occupied by big, efficient
capitalist farms, Social-Democrats do not propose the confiscation of such
lands for the purpose of dividing them among the small. farmers. While the
average yield of small peasant farming, either on privately owned or rented
land, does not reach 30 poods per dessiatin, the average yield of
capitalist agriculture in Russia is over 50 poods” (p. 64).

In saying this, Larin in effect throws overboard the idea of a
peasant agrarian revolution, for his average figures of crop
yields appertain to all the landlord lands. If we do not believe
in the possibility of achieving a wider and more rapid increase in the
productivity of labour on small farms after they have been freed from the
yoke of serfdom, then all talk about “supporting the revolutionary
actions of the peasantry, including the confiscation of the laud from the
landlords”, is meaningless. Besides, Larin forgets
that on the question of “the purpose for which Social-Democrats
propose the confiscation of capitalist estates”, there is the
decision of the Stockholm Congress.

It was Comrade Strumilin who, at the Stockholm Congress, moved an
amendment to insert after the words: economic development (in the
resolution), the following:
“insisting, therefore, that the confiscated big capitalist farms
should continue to be exploited on capitalist lines in the interests of the
whole of the people, and under conditions that best meet the needs of the
agricultural proletariat” (p. 157). This amendment was rejected
almost unanimously, it received only one vote (ibid.).

Nevertheless, propaganda is being carried on among the masses that
ignores the decision of the Congress! The retention of private ownership of
allotment land makes municipalisation such a confusing thing, that
commentaries on the programme cannot help running counter to the decision
of the Congress.

K. Kautsky, who has been so frequently and unfairly quoted in favour of
one or the other programme (unfairly because he has categorically declined
to express a definite view on the question and has confined himself to
explaining certain general truths), Kautsky, who, curiously enough, was
oven cited as being in favour of municipalisation, wrote, it turns out, to
M. Shanin in April 1906 as follows:

“Evidently, by municipalisation I meant something different from what
you, and perhaps Maslov, mean. What I meant was the following: the big
landed estates will be confiscated and large-scale agriculture will be
continued upon such land, either by the municipalities ii] or by larger
organisations, or else the land will be rented out to producers
associations. I do not know whether that is possible in Russia or whether
it would be acceptable to the peasants. Nor do I say that we should demand
it, but ii the demand is raised by others, I think we could easily agree to
it. It would be an interesting
experiment.”[1]

These quotations should suffice to show how those who were, or are,
fully in sympathy with the Stockholm programme, are destroying it
by the way they interpret it. The fault here lies in the hopeless muddle in
the programme; in theory it is bound up with the repudiation of
Marx’s theory of rent, in practice it is an adaptation to the
impossible “middle” event of local democracy under a
non-democratic central government, and in economics it amounts to
introducing petty-bourgeois, quasi-socialist reformism into the programme
of the bourgeois revolution.

Notes

[1]M. Shanin, Municipalisation or Division for Private Property,
Vilna, 1907, p. 4. M. Shanin rightly expresses doubt whether Kautsky may
he counted among the supporters of municipalisation and protests
against the Mensheviks’ self-advertisement (in the Menshevik
Pravda,[2] 1906) in regard to Kautsky. Kautsky himself, in a
letter— published by Maslov, bluntly says: “We may leave it to
the peasants to decide the forms of property to he adopted on the
land confiscated from the big landowners. I would consider it a mistake to
impose anything
on them in that respect” (p. 16, The Question of the Agrarian
Programme, by Maslov and Kautsky. Novy Mir Publishers,
Moscow, 1906). This quite definite statement by Kautsky certainly
excludes municipalisation of the land, which the Mensheviks want to
impose on the peasants. —Lenin

[2]Pravda (Truth)—a monthly Menshevik magazine
dealing with questions of art, literature, and social activities, published
in Moscow in 1904-06.